Luke 9:23 - Rick Scherr

Luke 9:23 - Rick Scherr

Rick Scherr's lesson focuses on the importance of denying ourselves, picking up our cross daily, and following Jesus. He emphasizes the need to sacrifice for God and put Him above our own desires. Rick encourages listeners to be attentive to where Jesus is working and join Him in His work. The talk reminds us that by aligning ourselves with God's plans and being courageous in our sacrifice, we can become a visible representation of Christ in the world.

Transcript

Luke 923 there are three things I'm just going to give you guys. Three things that I was thinking about as I was memorizing and meditating and reflecting on Luke 923.

We are headed into some very exciting times. S God is clearly doing things. I've had several folks even not having anything to do with our ministry, but other ministries in this area. A church person with a church that I was talking to, talking about unique things going on in northern Kentucky and interestingly, made a comment about, gosh, we've seen more baptisms than normal this fall and this summer. And I'm like, that sounds familiar to our experience as well.

So whatever God is doing, we're here for the ride. We want to connect to it, right? We want to be a part of it and just be ever present in what God has for us in this.

But I want to encourage you guys from this scripture because I feel like it's important because God works and the spirit does great things in and through people, through hearts that are available to him, through people who lay themselves down as people who are willing to sacrifice for him. And if that doesn't happen right, then God would just go work somewhere else.

And so for us, there's no guarantee that we get to be a part of it. But it's exciting, right? I mean, I'm going to talk about this in a few minutes, but NLT is starting earlier and we're going to add 20 folks to this room. I have no idea where they're going to fit now that I'm sitting here looking at this.

But we'll figure it out, right? It'll be a little tight, but that's really exciting, right? What's going on and what God is doing?

I was talking to met with Aiden this morning, and we were talking about things, and I was reminded of an old book called experiencing God. And the point of the book, the whole point was, if you want to experience God, you just have to figure out where and what he's doing and go join in with it. And so the point of the whole thing was the only way to experience God. The road to experiencing God, doing something great, has nothing to do with you doing something. You just have to look and find something.

Does that make sense? Like, the point was, which is very important, that it's not about you creating or you doing something or you working something up or you doing something. It's about you looking and watching and praying and saying, where are you doing something, God, what are you doing? And then you find it and you see it and you go join in with it. That's how you experience God.

And I think Luke 923 is a great verse that has three really powerful reminders about how we join in with what God is doing.

As a reminder, just in case you guys wanted to see if you did well, then he said to them all, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. If you want something to teach on with folks, those three things about coming after Jesus are great and powerful points in and of themselves. He must first deny himself. Turn to John twelve, starting in verse it. 24 in John twelve says, I tell you the truth.

Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. You can recognize already the similar wording that Jesus has here with the scripture that we're looking at. But denying yourself is the beginning.

Putting yourself in a position where you're saying, okay, I'm going to sacrifice. And in this instant it literally says, if you don't die to yourself, you don't die. You just remain a seed. There is nothing, nothing's going to happen unless you're willing to sacrifice, right? And if you look at 923 and it's talking about denying yourself, that whole little section that Jesus, where he's talking concludes with, what good is it for a man if he gained the whole world and yet he lose and forfeit his very self?

So clearly the denial is about us and what we could gain in this world.

The starting point for experiencing God and us experiencing him doing something great is going to be an absolute resolve that we understand that it's going to take sacrifice and denying yourself, there's just no other way around it. If you signed up to be in this room to have fun, to laugh and do skits, to get to have friends, you're in the wrong place, right? And you're in the wrong ministry. Because what we sign up for and what I'm going to try to talk to the 20 folks who want to come into this room over the course of the next few weeks and few months about is if you want to do this ministry, we are doing what we see in the scriptures. And it starts with sacrifice and being ready to say, okay, I'm going to deny myself.

I'm going to deny myself financial things, I'm going to deny myself getting to play games that I want to play? I'm going to deny myself time on social media. I'm going to deny myself even friendships. I'm going to deny relationships with girls and guys like dating. Relationships might suffer.

There's so many things, right, that we know that get put on that altar to be sacrificed. We are going to deny ourselves so that we can go and experience what God has for us. And pick up your cross daily. The next part, right. Turn to acts 20.

This is scripture you've probably heard before, but it's important to remember, right. There are a few key words in this scripture that Jesus says, pick up your cross daily. The first is pick up your clearly. And it's not often that Jesus individualizes things so much, but this is clearly an individual's cross, meaning, like each of you, in a sense, we have a cross to bear, something we have to pick up. So it starts with denying yourself.

Yes. So you say no to things, you say no to the world. You say no to things that you might want, that your flesh might want. You say no to what normal people your age are doing, and then you say yes to your cross. And if you're in this room, your cross is your school.

It's your high school, it's your middle school. It's your ministry that God has asked you to, that is your cross. And in addition to him saying, I want you to pick up your cross, he says, I want you to do it daily.

It's pretty amazing that Jesus chose to use some of these words, right, the word your and the word daily being in there, because he could have just said, pick up a cross. Pick up something hard and follow me. But he said, pick up your cross, which is whatever calling God has in your life right now. And again, if you're in this room today and tomorrow, I know what that cross is for each of you, and this is what God has asked you to do. And you guys get the illustration, right?

I mean, Jesus, anyone who is being led to the cross, led to death, led to being crucified on. A cross had to carry the beam that they were going to be crucified on. They had to literally pick up their cross and drag it from wherever the pile of those things were all the way to the place where they would be crucified, and they had to pick up their cross, and they had to drag it there. And that, obviously the illustration, could it be more of a grind, of a laborious, step after step, challenging thing to carry your cross? And so Jesus right away says, look, if you're going to dive into what I'm doing, being a part of what I'm doing.

Dive into your cross, your calling. It's a pretty vivid picture of what that's going to be like, right? It's going to be, one day your students are like, yeah, let's get together. And the next day they're like ghosting you, right? And then they're going to be like, oh, I'm so excited about Jesus.

And I stand up to the say so, and then the next thing you know, they're know. You hear about them getting drunk at a know two weeks later, and it's gonna be step after step carrying the cross. A grind not going to be easy. Paul gives us such a vivid picture of his cross in acts 2024. If you don't know that scripture, he says, however, I consider my life worth nothing to me.

If I only may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, you might as well say, pick up the cross that the Lord Jesus has given me. The task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. And we know for Paul that testifying of God's grace, that preaching of God's word was specifically to the gentiles, but that was his calling, to pick up his cross in every day, to get up and to travel to a new place and to speak to people, not jewish people, about Jesus and this way of salvation. And the last thing, and follow me in Luke 923, turn to acts 413.

For each of us, we deny ourselves. We step out knowing that it's going to be sacrifice. We pick up the calling that we have each day. I mean, I was thinking, one of the things you could do, here's a great team exercise for you guys. Next time you're looking for an exercise to do or something to do when you're with your leader team, what are the ways you can daily pick up your cross?

What are the ways you can daily do whatever it is that God is having you do? I mean, some are simple, right? You could go out to take a student out after school to get ice cream. That's an easy one. But maybe that student is not available, right?

It's not something where God says, hey, pick up your cross daily, and if you feel like not picking it up tomorrow, that's fine, right? The idea is, what can you do each day? That is you engaging in this cross, carrying that God has for you. And there's all kinds of things, right? Not certainly praying, certainly praying for folks, but certainly other things.

Sending text messages, sending just general messages getting together with your team to do something. There's certainly many different things going to any sporting event right back in the day, and I don't think we've done this in a long time. We used to do contact work after school every day. We just show up right when students are getting out of school. We'd be there in the hallway or out in front of the school and just talk to people in the parking lot.

It's a little cold for that right now, but you could maybe sneak into the school and talk to people in there, depending on your school situation. But there are always students milling around and hanging out after school. There are many different ways you can pick up your cross daily. And then the last thing is following Jesus, right. For us, what I've just described is about what I talked about in the beginning.

It's about us recognizing that it's Jesus doing something. Where is he working and then going with it? Is he working in that student's life? Is he working over there in those students'lives? Where is he doing something?

I'm going to go and I'm going to find it, and I'm going to follow Jesus into whatever that is. When I see him working in a student's life, when I see him working over here with these students, I'm going to go wherever that is. So we follow Jesus into that. This scripture came to my mind when I was thinking about this. And this is after Peter and John had been preaching to the jewish people.

And it says, the verse before twelve is a famous verse that we should all know. It might even be a TMS verse. But salvation is found in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. So that's the conclusion to this great sermon and preaching that they were doing.

And it says, when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. They're just following Jesus. They're speaking out and being courageous in their sacrifice and courageous in their carrying of their cross, following Jesus into whatever it might be, whatever it might look like. I know it's messy, right? I've done this ministry also for a long time.

And it's always messy. It's always difficult, right? Even in a school where things are happening, there's lots of drama and hard things that you deal with. There's always something, right? Because it's a broken world and they're broken students, and we're just trying to bring Jesus and bring light into their lives, into lives of others.

So my great encouragement from the scripture, Luke 923, right, is that we sacrifice, that we pick up our crosses, but that we follow Jesus into whatever it is that he has in these place as we go. And you're looking for what he's doing, and you're following him, and just the same, you'll be filled with courage, and people will be like, wow, these people, they must walk with Jesus. There's something different about them because you're with Jesus when you're doing this.